Fresh on the heels of releasing Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, Canonical has delivered an updated version of its Ubuntu Business Desktop Remix. As found in previous versions, this new update features applications likely to be appreciated by business users, and doesn’t include various games and other entertainment-focused options. The update is based on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, and here’s more on what you’ll find in it.

Canonical, of course, has made much noise recently about how it wants more enterprises and businesses of all sizes to adopt Ubuntu. The 12.04 release expanded long-term support and added cloud computing options for just that reason. The new Business Desktop Remix is squarely focused on business users, as noted on the Canonical blog:

"Designed for corporate and government organisations evaluating Ubuntu for their desktop infrastructure, the Business Desktop Remix is a simple base image that can be deployed into your corporate environment or used as a starting point for further customisation."

The post also clarifies some of the choices regarding bundled applications:

"To save time in deployment, we’ve removed games, social networking programs, file sharing apps and technical tools. In their place, you’ll find software more appropriate for a corporate environment, including VMware View, the Adobe Flash Plugin and the OpenJDK 6 Java runtime environment. Ubuntu Business Desktop Remix provides full language support in both 32 and 64-bit builds, just like the standard Ubuntu. Users also benefit from the great new productivity features introduced in Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, including built-in support for Microsoft Windows RDP 7.1 and the Microsoft Visio diagram importer in LibreOffice Draw."

Can a combination of long-term support, and a set of applications optimized for business users help Ubuntu become more entrenched in businesses? Many businesses are standardized on Microsoft’s platforms, and in some cases extricating these businesses from those platforms is a tall order. However, just as Red Hat has found success aggressively supporting open source software, Canonical can definitely increase Ubuntu’s footprint in businesses.

The Business Desktop Remix requires registration, and you can register and download here. 

Over the weekend, The Hill reported that U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee members will look into claims from Mozilla that Microsoft is weilding monopoly power by making it difficult for non-Microsoft browsers to to run efficiently on Windows devices with ARM processors. Many mobile phones use ARM processors, so the dispute is similar to the browser-related disputes that Microsoft has gotten into in the past, except updated to apply to phone platforms. If The Hill’s report is correct, Microsoft may need to change its practices immediately.

Browsers have been at the center of scrutiny from the government toward Microsoft for many years, ever since the U.S. Department of Justice pursued its antitrust case against the company. The latest claims from Mozilla surround Microsoft allegedly withholding APIs needed to make non-Microsoft browsers competitive on Windows RT. According to Mozilla’s Asa Dotzler:

"For Windows on X86, Microsoft is giving other browsers basically the same privileges it gives IE. It’s not great that you don’t get those privileges (certain API access) unless you’re the default browser and I think that’s deeply unfair (a post for later,) but at least we’re able to build a competitive browser and ship it to Windows users on x86 chips. But on ARM chips, Microsoft gives IE access special APIs absolutely necessary for building a modern browser that it won’t give to other browsers so there’s no way another browser can possibly compete with IE in terms of features or performance."

In all likelihood, if members of the Senate Judiciary Committe even begin sniffing around this issue, it will prompt action in the direction of compliance from Microsoft. The company doesn’t want to immerse itself in a replay of the browser-centric government investigations that it has endured in the past. For much more on what to expect here, see Asa Dotzler’s updated post on the matter, found here.

How one small, unobtrusive program totally changed the way we interact with computers

Living in the Future is a new column about those rare moments, as we go about our daily lives, when we realize that what we’re doing is amazing. We have a tendency to assimilate new tech into our lives without giving it much thought, or even without much gratitude, as Louis C.K. reminds us. But every once in awhile, we get that visceral “whoomph” while doing something as mundane as listening to music or playing a video game, and think: “Holy shit. I can’t believe this is possible.”

I haven’t used a computer mouse in three years. That’s all because of an app for Mac OS X called Multiclutch. MultiClutch was a game changer for me, a brief but epiphanic look at the future of computing. The idea: you can map keyboard commands to multitouch gestures. This does not sound like a big deal.

It is a big deal.

I was introduced to Multiclutch about an hour after I’d bought my first Apple product, a MacBook Pro, in the summer of 2009. I bought the MacBook reluctantly, sort of sullenly, convinced I was going to hate it after a lifetime of Windows. I brought it over to a friend’s place to set it up.”Before you do anything else,” he said, “download Multiclutch.” I downloaded, I installed, I configured, and suddenly I got it. This was something different, something better in a basic way.

That’s the way computing is supposed to feel: like a glimpse three years in the future.Multiclutch was really more important in the doors it opened than what it was. It takes the way you use your computer away from keyboard commands or, god forbid, a mouse, which now seem archaic remnants of the past to be filed in a dark room on the shelf next to the floppy disks and the CRT monitors, to the futuristic swipety-swipe of a trackpad. Switching between tabs in a web browser isn’t a CMD-Shift-Bracket anymore, nor do I have to move the cursor up to select the tab I want–I just make this elegant little rotation of my fingers, left or right, and I’m on the next or previous tab. A three finger swipe up is now my universal command replacement for “new” or “open.” (Open a video in VLC? Swipe up. Open a new tab in Chrome? Swipe up.) Swiping left and right goes forward and backward. Swiping down means “close.” It is so natural, so intuitive, so easy. It makes computing with a keyboard and “mouse” feel as sleek and futuristic as a touchscreen.

The feeling of control was totally different from the keystroke-based computing I was used to. It no longer felt like I was commanding an army from far away, typing these directives to be coldly executed on my screen. Instead, it felt like I was actually in control. I wasn’t telling the computer to switch tabs–I was switching tabs. When I swipe three fingers down, I don’t think about “swiping three fingers down,” and I don’t think “CMD-W”: I think about closing whatever I’m doing.

It’s efficient, for many tasks faster than keyboard commands, but that’s not exactly why it feels so good. It’s more about bridging the communication gap between yourself and a computer, breaking down these complex key-related translations and using your hands in the same way you use your hands in real life: gesturing.

When you talk, you gesture. You use your hands to give commands, hurl insults, show appreciation–you communicate, on a basic level–and it’s all instinctive. Other people, assuming they’ve been raised with your particular culture’s gestures, understand you. It can be more concise, more elegant, than using your words. And I came to see multitouch in the same way. I wasn’t using my words, or my keyboard, to instruct my computer on how I wanted it to work. I wasn’t using the old system of mousing, which is reliant on moving a cursor and selecting individual buttons, like flicking switches in an old airplane cockpit. That’s all gone. It’s not a keyboard, and it’s not a mouse. It’s better than both. Why bother with menus, commands, strings of input, or button-clicking when a swipe is so much more natural and universal?

Apple has gone on record saying that the company has no plans to release a touchscreen laptop. It just isn’t practical to use, they say. Apple’s answer, a way to change input so it feels just as futuristic as a touchscreen, is–surprise, surprise–the same idea as Multiclutch. Mac OS Lion, that dumb buggy beast of an update, has many of those gestures built-in, plus some other ones to open Mission Control, flip between Spaces, drag, or look up words in the dictionary.

MultiClutch hasn’t been under active development probably in years, at this point, and isn’t compatible with Lion anyway. I’ve moved to a similar program called BetterTouchTool, which is actually significantly more powerful than either MultiClutch or Lion’s built-in tools. But the specific program is less important than the idea behind it, anyway–I wasn’t excited about a cool new program, I was excited for a totally unexpected way to interact with my computer, and even though I don’t use them, I think it’s pretty exciting that Apple baked this idea right into the OS. That’s the way computing is supposed to feel: like a glimpse three years in the future.

Tired of the current crop of tablets mostly sporting Android and iOS? If that’s the case, mark your calendars for November, because according to reports, that’s when Intel-based slates running Microsoft’s Windows 8 operating system are set to land in retail. Anticipation is running high for next-generation tablets equipped with Microsoft’s touch-friendly OS, which could prove game changing in the mobile space.

An un-named source “familiar with the device makers’ plans” told CNet that the first wave of such tablets will show up in stores in November. The source described the schedule as being “tight” and that Windows 8 mobile devices won’t be limited to strictly tablets, but over half of the “more than a dozen” models will be hybrid devices that function as both a notebook and a tablet.

Each Windows 8 device, whether it be a full-blown tablet or a convertible, will run Intel’s Clover Trail Atom platform, which will be the chip maker’s first dual-core Atom design built on a 32nm manufacturing process. A single-core version of Clover Trail will be used in smartphones.

Image Credit: Redmond Pie

French researchers from the Institut Polytechnique Grenoble and the Centre Technique du Papier are in the process of developing a wallpaper that blocks a range of Wi-Fi frequencies. The smart reams of paper are to be known as Metapaper.

The triangle snowflake pattern found on Metapaper is where its smart characteristics originate from. It is covered in a conductive ink that contains particles of silver. Plus if you don’t like the pattern, you will be able to cover it up with more traditional wallpaper without affecting Metapaper’s abilities.

Affordable Wi-Fi blocking wallpaper will be sure to please those in tinfoil hats

It isn’t a fail proof solution for those in tinfoil hats however, one would have to cover doors, roofs and windows in the wallpaper as well to ensure no Wi-Fi signals leave or enter your basement – or house. Even though many Wi-Fi frequencies will be blocked, your mobile phone’s calling, texting and 3G data connectivity abilities will be unaffected.

The French researchers say that it will be rather affordable as well; costing as much as conventional wallpaper. A far cry cheaper than previous attempts that cost some £500 per square foot. Metapaper is hoped to be launched sometime next year.